Watch People Watch and Be Watched in ‘The Watcher’

A lot of people watch people in Netflix’s The Watcher. You know because you see them watching, but also because they say things like, “I’m watching you.” Also, there is someone watching the family at the center of the recent show, created by Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan and based on Reeves Wiedeman’s 2018 New York magazine article “The Haunting of a Dream House.” Or maybe it’s multiple someones contributing to the passive-aggressive terror inflicted on the Brannocks after they move into a gorgeous house in Westfield, New Jersey, start receiving letters from “The Watcher,” and also find strangers in their home.

Despite enlisting the help of the local police, a private investigator, and a realtor played by Jennifer Coolidge, no one is actually very helpful. This causes Brannock patriarch Dean (Bobby Cannavale) to be flummoxed and say, “What?,” a lot upon the knowledge of a new lead that will inevitably careen into a dead end, and his wife Nora (Naomi Watts) to look slightly off camera in subtly abject terror. The pauses are pregnant with demon babies. If only there were actual demon babies to make this show exciting. Instead, a side plot finds Nora becoming an art star via her extremely basic, Pottery Barn-ass vases.

And yet, I watched The Watcher. I watched all of it. One episode after another. They got me! If you don’t want to be spoiled, look away now, but I think you should actually be spoiled, because the show turns from intriguing to exasperating and then infuriating when it is revealed that this story, for all of its maybes and suspects, has no resolution. The case is still unsolved, we’re told. True as that may be, solve your show! Lie to us! Tie it all up and send us on our way, otherwise what did we just spend six hours on? (Shoutout to Mia Farrow, though, who plays her role as a busybody obsessed with the preservation of the Brannocks’ home, with way more gusto than this project deserves. What a pro!)

Not helping matters is the distinct sense of padding afoot, as what could have been a tight two-hour movie is spread out into a “limited series.” And without the kind of repetition in the supercut below of people on The Watcher saying “The Watcher” and other forms of the word “watch,” none of this might be possible. Enjoy?